Why mobile phone text messages become "information junkyard"
During the "Double 11" online shopping festival, many people frequently received marketing text messages on their mobile phones.
Open the SMS inbox at will, almost all kinds of product discount information and promotion advertisements are greeted.
Although the end of these messages is often accompanied by the phrase "return to TD to unsubscribe", in the experience of many people, after replying to "TD" many times before, marketing text messages will still "bomb" the mobile phone as expected.
In this regard, although the majority of consumers are unbearable, they can't do anything about it.
Back in those days, when instant messaging software such as WeChat had not yet emerged, SMS used to be an important way for us to communicate with relatives and friends.
When sending text messages, we consider every word, for fear that the information we send to others will be decent and thorough. When we receive text messages, we will also read them carefully and regard them as basic social etiquette.
Although we occasionally received a few advertising text messages, we did not expect that many years later, the text message inbox would be completely occupied by marketing text messages, becoming an "information junkyard" that makes people feel annoying to click on. .
In response to the undesirable phenomenon of the proliferation of marketing text messages on the eve of Double 11, many media including Beijing Evening News and Southern Metropolis Daily have recently conducted interviews and investigations with ordinary consumers.
In related reports, some consumers said that after replying to "TD" for half a day, they would still receive various marketing text messages at a frequency of more than ten per day; some consumers reported that the same product brand would use different platforms In the name, four or five advertisements with similar content are sent one after another.
Obviously, marketing text messages are torture for most users, rather than incentives as businesses imagine.
In this regard, regulatory agencies should also pay attention to user "pain points" in a timely manner, make effective regulations on marketing SMS, and "slim down" the public's SMS inbox.
In fact, as early as 2016, the "Implementation Regulations of the Consumer Protection Law of the People's Republic of China" (hereinafter referred to as the "Implementation Regulations") put forward: "Without the explicit consent or request of consumers, operators shall , Mobile phones and other communication equipment, computers and other electronic terminals or electronic mailboxes, network hard drives and other electronic information spaces to send commercial electronic messages or make commercial sales calls.” However, in practice, we rarely see businesses actively soliciting users Agree.
On the contrary, "return to TD and unsubscribe" actually requires the user to explicitly refuse, and then the merchant will (possibly) stop sending marketing text messages.
This approach turns the obligation of merchants to actively solicit users' consent into an obligation for users to actively reject merchants. From time to time, merchants take a lot of extra advantage.
This is the exact opposite of the legislative intent of the "Implementation Regulations" and reverses the subject of rights and obligations.
Although the "Implementation Regulations" have not been formally passed and cannot directly restrain merchants, telecom service providers and regulatory agencies should also actively take countermeasures in the face of proliferation of marketing text messages, and should not ignore users' "dumb loss" situation.
The proliferation of marketing text messages brings more harm than just annoying people.
Behind the advertising distribution mechanism of "precisely matched to people", the risk of abuse of user privacy information is even more worthy of vigilance.
In this regard, telecommunications service providers and regulatory agencies should also take their due responsibility to decisively deal with violating enterprises, make them pay the price, and experience the "skin pain", so as to better protect the legitimate rights and interests of mobile phone users.
Yang Xinyu Source: China Youth Daily